The title, "Subjects, Objects,
Data and Values," concerns the central theme of the Einstein
meets Magritte conference the meeting of art and science.
Science is all about subjects and objects and particularly data,
but it excludes values. Art is concerned primarily with values
but doesn't really pay much attention to scientific data and
sometimes excludes objects. My own work has been concerned with
a Metaphysics of Quality that can cross over this division with
a single overall rational framework. A suitable subtitle could
be, "Some Connections Between the Metaphysics of Quality
and Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Complementarity." As I see
it, Bohr's Complementarity and the Metaphysics of Quality stand
midway between Einstein and Magritte. I have concentrated on
Bohr's work as a way of making the larger connection. Although
Bohr's stature in science is somewhat diminished from its dominance
in the 1920's and 1930's and his metaphysical ideas are all but
forgotten, the negative blow he dealt to the supremacy of objectivity
in science is still with us today.

Bohr and Einstein were there, "as well as nearly all
others who were contributing to theoretical physics. Lawrence
Bragg and Arthur Compton came from the United States. DeBroglie,
Born, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger all were to speak on the
formulation of the quantum theory.

"The subject was 'Electrons
and Photons.' To leave no doubt that it was directed to the main
question, the theme embroiling all of physics, discussion was
centered around the renunciation of certainty implied in the
new methods [of physics]* ... Bohr was invited to give the conference
a report on the epistemological problems confronting quantum
physics. By asking him to speak on the science of knowledge and
the grounds for it, the conference gave him full opportunity
to present Complementarity. There was no avoidance; the issue
had to be directly faced.

"Excitement mounted as Einstein rose to speak. He did
not keep them long in suspense. He did not like uncertainty.
He did not like the abandonment of 'reality.'
He did not think Complementarity was an acceptable solution,
or a necessary one. 'The
weakness of the theory lies in the fact that on the one hand,
no closer connection with the wave concept is obtainable,' he
said, 'and on the
other hand that it leaves to chance the time and the direction
of the elementary processes.'

"A dozen physicists were shouting in a dozen languages
for the floor. Individual arguments were breaking out in all
parts of the room. Lorentz, who was presiding,

pounded to restore order. He fought to
keep the discussion within the bounds of amity and order. But
so great was the noise and the commotion that Ehrenfest slipped
up to the blackboard, erased some of the figures that filled
it, and wrote:'The
Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.'

"As the embattled physicists suddenly recognized the
reference to the confusion of languages that beset the building
of the tower of Babel, a roar of laughter went up. The first
round had ended." (Moore 164)

The conference was carried on in events but also in private
meetings and personal conversations with "thought experiments"
carried out where physical conditions were imagined and results
were predicted on the basis of known scientific facts. Behind
the thought experiments was an all-important question of scientific
certainty. Bohr was saying that the particles that constitute
our material universe can only be described in terms of statistical
probability and never in terms of absolute certainty. He regarded
the development of the quantum revolution as in a certain sense
"complete." Quantum theory need no longer await some
enlightening revelation that would put everything right from
a classical point of view.

Einstein wasn't having any of it. Quantum theory was not complete,
he said. The universe is not ultimately a set of statistics.
It was at one of these meetings that Einstein asked his famous
question, "Do you really believe God resorts to dice playing?"

Thus began the controversy over Complementarity that continued
for the rest of Bohr's life. It seems that I have heard about
this famous schism all my life and wondered what it was about
but never thought I would ever study it because I do not have
the background in physics or mathematics to study it properly.
However, after my second book, Lila, came out in 1991,
a friend in Norway wrote me that there was some attention being
paid to Lila in Copenhagen by followers of Niels Bohr.
It was suggested that the Metaphysics of Quality was similar
to the Copenhagen Interpretation of the Quantum Theory.1That sounded like good news to me and something
I should look into. When similarities of this sort exist, they
can either be an odd coincidence or they can be evidence that
both systems of thought are describing something that is true
independently of either thinker. If the Copenhagen Interpretation,
which is an important explanation of quantum theory today, agrees
with the Metaphysics of Quality, and if the Metaphysics of Quality
is a correct theory of art, then there may be here a unified
theory of art and science. Einstein will have met Magritte and
the purpose of this conference will have been to some extent
fulfilled.

The volume of literature on quantum theory is enormous, and
to a non-mathematician much of it is inscrutable. Physicists
who do try to explain quantum theory in com-

mon language point out what a terrible
burden it is to try to discuss it in non-mathematical terms.
For me, a non-mathematician, it is also a burden to deal with
secondary sources on the problem without knowing what the original
mathematical language means. But there are two aspects to quantum
theory: the mathematics of
quantum theory and the philosophy of quantum theory. They are
very deeply separated. The first seems to work very well. The
second does not seem to work very well. Most physicists use the
mathematics of the quantum theory with complete confidence and
completely ignore the philosophy. I want to reverse that and
concentrate on the philosophy and bypass the math.

A minimum summary here of what brought things to this state
of conflict in 1927 is as follows:

Before 1900 there existed in physics a problem known as "the
ultra-violet catastrophe." Radiation from black bodies was
not behaving according to predictions. In 1900 Max Planck solved
this problem by theorizing that the radiant energy was coming
in packets, rather than in a continuous flow. In 1905 Einstein
saw that light was doing the same thing and named these packets
"quanta." In 1913 Niels Bohr, who had developed the
most widely accepted picture of the atom at that time, saw that
a description of the way these quanta behaved also fitted the
behavior of the electron in the atom.

With this new picture of the universe came a number of paradoxes:
the disappearance of space-time locality, the abandonment of
causality, and the contradictory appearance of atomic matter
as both particles and waves.

The record of the period just before the conference of 1927
is best given by physicist Werner Heisenberg who worked with
Bohr on this problem:

"I remember discussions with Bohr which went through
many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair,
and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk
in the neighboring park I repeated to myself again and again
the question: "Can nature possibly be as absurd as
it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?" (Heisenberg
42)

At another point Heisenberg said, "When you speak about
the model, you mean something which can only be described by
means of classical physics. As soon as you go away from classical
physics, then, in a strict sense you don't even know what a model
could possibly mean because then the words haven't got any meaning
anymore. Now this was a dilemma ... Bohr tried to keep the picture
while at the same time omitting classical mechanics. He tried
to keep the words and the pictures without keeping the meanings
of the words of the pictures. Both things are possible in such
a situation because your words don't really tackle the things
anymore. You can't get hold of the things by means of your words,
so what shall you do? ... Bohr's escape would be into the philosophy
of things." (qtd. in Folse 111)

Heisenberg remembers, "Those paradoxes were so in the
center of his mind that he just couldn't imagine that anybody
could find an answer to the paradoxes, even having the nicest
mathematical scheme in the world ... The very strange situation
was that now by

coming nearer and nearer to the solution
the paradoxes became worse and worse. That was the main experience
... nobody could know an answer to the question, 'Is
an electron now a wave or is it a particle, and how does it behave
if I do this or that and so on[?]' Therefore the paradoxes became
so much more pronounced in that time ... only by coming nearer
and nearer to the real thing to see that the paradoxes by no
means disappeared, but on the contrary got worse and worse because
they turn out more clearly ... like a chemist who tries to concentrate
his poison more and more from some kind of solution, we tried
to concentrate the poison of the paradox" (qtd. in Folse
85)

Heisenberg said, "Bohr was more worried than anybody
about the inconsistencies of quantum theory. So he tried really
to understand what is behind these difficulties ... Bohr really
suffered from it, and Bohr couldn't talk of anything else ...
He in some ways directly suffered from this impossibility to
penetrate into this very unanschaulich, unreasonable behavior
of nature ... But that was Bohr's whole philosophical attitude
he was a man who really always wanted to get the last degree
of clarity. He would never stop before the end ... Bohr would
follow the thing to the very end, just to the point where he
was just at the wall ... He did see that the whole theory was
on the one hand extremely successful, and on the other hand was
fundamentally wrong. And that was a contradiction which was very
difficult to bear, especially for a man who had formulated the
theory. So he was in a continuous inner discussion about the
problem. He always worried, 'what
has happened?'" (qtd. in Folse 36-37)

During this early development of quantum theory there appeared
a disagreement between Bohr and Heisenberg that is important
to notice. Heisenberg was satisfied that the mathematical solution,
matrix mechanics, gave all the understanding of atomic systems
that was needed. Verbal pictures of what was going on were not
necessary. Classical theoretical notions as "objects"
are no more than conceptual instruments for predicting successfully
the outcome of various experiments.

Heisenberg said, "Well, we have a consistent mathematical
scheme and this consistent mathematical scheme tells us everything
which can be observed. Nothing is in nature which cannot be described
by this scheme ... Since classical physics is not true there,
why should we stick so much to these concepts? Why not say just
that we cannot use these concepts with a high degree of precision
... and therefore we have to abandon the classical concepts to
a certain extent. When we get beyond this range of the classical
theory we must realize that our words don't fit. They don't really
get a hold in the physical reality and therefore a new mathematical
scheme is just as good as anything because the new mathematical
scheme then tells what may be there and what may not be there."
(qtd. in Folse 94) This, early view of Heisenberg's
is, I understand, the view of most physicists today. If the mathematics
works who needs the philosophy? But Bohr did not agree at all
with this view.

Bohr saw that the quantum theory's mathematical formulation
had to have a connection to the cultural world of everyday life
in which the experiments are performed.

If that connection were not made there
would be no way to run an experiment that would prove whether
a quantum prediction was true or not. Quantum theory must be
verified by classical concepts that refer to observable properties
of nature.

Heisenberg remembers, "Sometimes Bohr and I would disagree
because I would say, 'Well,
I'm convinced that this is the solution already.' Bohr would
say, 'No there you
come into a contradiction.' Then sometimes I had the impression
that Bohr really tried to lead me onto Glatteis, onto
slippery ground, in order to prove that I had not the solution.
But, this was, of course, exactly what he had to do from his
point of view. It was perfectly correct. He was also perfectly
correct in saying, 'So
long as it is possible that you get onto slippery ground, then
it means that we have not understood the theory.'" (qtd.
in Folse 86-87)

Heisenberg said the controversy was so intense, "I remember
that it ended with my breaking out into tears because I just
couldn't stand this pressure from Bohr." (qtd. in Jammer
65) But Heisenberg concluded, " ... just by these discussions
with Bohr I learned that the thing which I in some way attempted
could not be done. That is one cannot go entirely away from the
old words because one has to talk about something ... So I could
realize that I could not avoid using these weak terms which we
always have used for many years in order to describe what I see.
So I saw that in order to describe phenomena one needs a language
... The terms don't get hold of the phenomena, but still, to
some extent, they do. I realized, in the process of these discussions
with Bohr, how desperate the situation is. On the one hand we
knew that our concepts don't work, and on the other hand we have
nothing except the concepts with which we could talk about what
we see ... I think this tension you just have to take; you can't
avoid it. That was perhaps the strongest experience of these
months." (qtd. in Folse 96)

As I read these statements it occurred to me that the tension
that Heisenberg referred to still exists today. Although scientists
have great problems in their work with the use of the everyday
language of literature and the arts, they cannot do without it.

When Bohr formulated his philosophy of Complementarity that
was what he was trying to dofind
a common ground between the new quantum theory and the language
of everyday life. It was this effort that Einstein attacked here
in Brussels in October 1927. Bohr was really caught in the middle
between anti-realists like Heisenberg who said, forget the philosophy
and the realists like Einstein who said, if you stay with statistics
without specifying what it means in terms of real external objects,
then you are leaving reality behind.

The debate was always in terms of thought experiments. Although
Bohr had said, "Reality is a term we must learn to use,"
the debate was never raised to the level of a discussion of what
this "physical reality" is whose description is either
complete or incomplete. The reason may be that in those days
a philosophic discussion of "reality" was greatly discouraged.
Discussions of reality were metaphysics and metaphysics was something
associated with medieval religious mysticism. Yet as I read through
the material even

I could see that this was not primarily
a quarrel about physics, it was about metaphysics. And I saw
that others had noted that too.2 There
is no way one can possibly construct a scientific experiment
to determine whether or not an external reality exists if there
is a difference in metaphysical interpretation. Whatever results
you come up with can still be explained differently in each metaphysical
system.

So it is necessary to get into a closer look at [the] metaphysical
system of Complementarity itself. As almost everyone comments,
it is not easy to understand. I have been over the materials
dozens of times and still am not at all sure I have it completely
right. I want to show some simple diagrams first to make it clearer.

Figure 1

This first drawing represents the classical
view of science. We are the subject. The external world is the
object. We study the object with measuring instruments to collect
data about the object, work with logic and math on this data
and develop a theory to explain what this object really is. This
view is so well known to us today we think of it as common
sense. If there were space it would be valuable to get into
the history of how this view came into being. In 400 of the last
500 years it has worked with enormous success. It is only in
the last hundred years or so that our measurements are showing
that the objects we are studying are apparently impossible. Since
the phenomena from the measurements are not about to change,
Bohr concluded that the logic of science must change to accommodate
them.

Complementarity [is] easier to understand
when it is described in two steps, of which this is the first.
There is a shift in reality shown here from the object to the
data. This view, known as phenomenalism, says that what we really
observe is not the object. What we really observe is only data.
This philosophy of science is associated with Ernst Mach and
the positivists. Einstein did not like it and assumed Bohr shared
it, but Bohr did not reject objectivity completely. He did not
care so much which philosophical camp he was in. He was mainly
concerned with whether Complementarity provided an adequate description
to go with the quantum theory.

This diagram is not anything Bohr generated.
It is something I have assembled myself and although I have revised
it many times I would still expect Bohr to find things wrong
with it, and others too who are more familiar with this subject
than I am. Bohr saw the Complementarity that is diagrammed here
as a way of solving many paradoxes but the wave-particle paradox
was the paradox he seems to have given the most attention to
and I will use this paradox only.

First, notice that within this phenomenal object all things
are together except the visualized object that is surrounded
by an inner oval. There is no sharp exclusion of the observer
from the observation. There is no sharp distinction of the measuring
instrument from the experiment. The whole phenomenon is treated
as one big observational interaction in which the distinction
between observing system and observed phenomenal object is clear
but is arbitrary.

Second, notice that on the right hand side of this larger
oval there are two experiments: Experiment A and Experiment
B. From Experiment A the observer observes waves. From Experiment
B the observer observes particles. The experiments never put
these two together. It is wrong to say that the experiments are
on the same object or on any object at all. It is wrong to say
that waves or particles are there before the experiment takes
place. We can never say what goes into the experiment. We can
only comment on what comes out.

Third, notice that when observer A observes experiment A and
then, at another

time, he observes experiment B, he may
afterward in his mind combine the results of experiment A and
experiment B to produce a "visualized" or "idealized"
object. This visual object is a sort of mental collage created
by the observer. Experiment A and Experiment B have been combined
in a complementary way to produce a physical description.
And that is where Bohr gets the name Complementarity for his
philosophy.

Fourth, notice that this "visualized" object, that
now may be called "light," is both waves and particles.
Its description is what we must mean when we speak of
objectivity. When Bohr says "It is wrong to think that the
task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns
what we can say about nature." (Herbert
p 45) He means that this visualized object is all we can talk
about. It is an abstraction, but there is no other object. There
is no "deep reality."

Fifth, notice that observer A then communicates this visualized
object in an unambiguous way to observer B. By "unambiguous"
is meant that A communicates it through a mathematical formalism
combined with a word picture. All measuring equipment must be
included in an unambiguous description. Later observer B can
run his own experiment using the same measuring instruments and
testing conditions to confirm the unambiguous communication from
observer A. The proved unambiguity of this communication verifies
the true objectivity of A's visualized object.

It can now be said that, because of this way of understanding
things, a truly objective description has been given of light
as both waves and particles without involving nature in a contradiction.

Finally, notice that this largest oval, the unmeasured phenomenal
object shown with the dashed line, contains everything that Bohr
talks about. He never discusses the old physical reality shown
with the question mark off to the right that is external to this
unmeasured phenomenal object. But, more importantly, he never
mentions this larger oval, this unmeasured phenomenal object
itself, presumably because to do so would be meaningless. It
has no properties. The properties result only from the experiment
that occurs within this oval. I have made this oval with a dashed
line because I have a feeling Bohr wouldn't approve of it. But
I think this larger unmeasured phenomenal object with the dashed
line has to be there because if it were not there the only thing
the experiments would be measuring is the measuring instruments
themselves. Though Bohr doesn't describe it, something
has to go into the front end of each experiment. I may be missing
something but I don't see how you can have an experiment where
nothing goes in but phenomena come out. Bohr may say that what
goes in the front end of the experiment is "meaningless"
and by the use of that term invite us to never think of it at
all. But there has to be something going in whether it is meaningless
or not. I make this point now because I will [be] coming to it
later.

It has been said that neither Einstein nor Bohr seemed explicitly
aware that although they conducted their dispute in terms of
thought experiments, the dispute is nevertheless about metaphysics.
The metaphysical issue at the root of it all is the old mind-

versus-matter issue, the subject-versus-object
issue that has dogged philosophy since the days of Isaac Newton
and David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

Bohr's Complementarity was accused of being subjectivistic.
If the world is composed of subjects and objects, and if Bohr
says the properties of the atom are not in the objects, then
Bohr is saying that the properties of the atom are in the subject.
But if there is one thing science cannot be it is subjective.
You cannot seriously say that science is all in your head. However
in his early writing on Complementarity that is what Bohr seemed
to be saying. (Folse 24) Bohr was trying
to work out a problem in quantum physics, not just juggle a lot
of philosophic categories, and Henry Folse says it didn't seem
to occur to him what the implications of this might be. In his
first paper on Complementarity Bohr made no mention of objectivity
and actually made the gross mistake of calling his Complementarity
subjective. He also spoke of scientific observation as "disturbing
the phenomenon" which suggested that either he was talking
about thoughts disturbing objects or else talking about phenomena
being subjective.

Given this attack on his subjectivity it can be seen why Bohr
developed the concepts of "phenomenal object" and "visual
object" as independent of the subject in the diagram I have
just shown you. He was constantly under pressure to prove that [what] he was talking about was not
subjective.

However, in my own opinion, that still doesn't get him out
of the charge of subjectivity. When Bohr says the test of objective,
scientific truth is "unambiguous communication" he
is saying that it is not nature but society that ultimately
decides what is true. But a society is not an objective entity.
As anthropologists well know, societies are subjective too. The
only truly objective aspects of "unambiguous communication"
are the brain circuits that produce it; the larynx; the sound
waves or other media that carry it; the ear drum, and the brain
circuits that receive it. These can process falsehood just as
easily as truth.

Folse says that Bohr never overcame the criticism that his
philosophy was subjectivistic. "Bohr had envisioned Complementarity
spreading out into wider and wider fields, just as the mechanical
approach of Galileo had started in astronomy and simple phenomena
of motion and gradually spread to all of the physical sciences."
(Folse 168) But that never happened. Quantum
physics dominates the scientific scene today but not because
of Bohr's philosophy of Complementarity. It dominates because
the mathematical formalisms of quantum theory correctly predict
atomic phenomena. Bohr was disappointed all his life by what
he regarded as the failure of philosophers to understand Complementarity.
Except for William James he "felt that philosophers were
very odd people who really were lost." (Folse
44) Late in his life he remarked, "I think that it would
be reasonable to say that no man who is called a philosopher
really understands what is meant by the Complementary descriptions."
And as Folse concludes, "that somewhat wistful comment by
this

great pioneer of modern atomic theory is
as sadly true today as it was over fifty years ago." (Folse44) Although Bohr
had intended to write a book that contained and developed his
philosophical ideas he never wrote it. This leads me to think
that he realized his philosophy wasn't working the way he hoped
it would but didn't know what to do about it. He talked as though
he was sure it was right but was frustrated and disappointed
that it never seemed to have caught on with others.

Henry Folse said that, "In what was to be his last interview,
the day before his death, Bohr was questioned by Thomas
Kuhn about the nature of his interest in fundamental philosophical
problems. His answer was direct:'It
was in some ways my life, you see.'" (Folse
31) That reply had an understatement and sadness to it that left
me quiet for a long time.

The Metaphysics of Quality

I want to make a sharp shift now from Copenhagen to the town
of Bozeman, Montana and the English department of Montana State
College in 1959 when I was a teacher there. Sometimes people
come at me when I talk about the problem of understanding quality
as though I had made it up by myself. But I was under legal contract
with the state government of Montana to teach quality even though
I had no clear idea what it was, and nobody else did either.
Anthropologists know that every culture has strange and bizarre
practices that make no sense from a practical view, but it is
much easier to spot those practices in other cultures than in
our own. I will point out to you that for centuries rhetoric
instructors in our culture have been paid to pass and fail students
on the quality of their writing without ever having any viable
definition of what that quality is or even if there is such a
thing at all. That is a bizarre practice that I tried to end.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [ZMM]
I described how the question, "What is quality?" had
been arrived at, and I described the first attempt to solve it
where Phaedrus thinks to himself: "Quality ... you
know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But that's self-contradictory.
But some things are better than others, that is, they have more
quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from
the things that have it, it all goes pouf! There's nothing to
talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you
know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no
one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't
exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist.
What else are the grades based on? Why else would people pay
fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile?
Obviously some things are better than others ... but what's the
'betterness'? ...
So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere
finding anyplace to get traction."

It was a common mischievous practice for students to send
the same rhetoric paper to different teachers and observe that
it got different grades. From this the students would argue that
the whole idea of quality was meaningless. But one instructor
turned the tables on them and handed a group of papers to several
different students and asked each student to grade them for quality.
As he expected, the student's relative rankings correlated with

each other and with those of the instructor.
This meant that although the students were saying there is no
such thing as quality, they already knew what it was, and could
not deny it.

So what I did is transfer that exercise into the classroom,
having the students judge four papers day after day until they
saw that they knew what quality is. They never had to say in
any conceptual way what kind of object quality is but they understood
that when you see it you know it. Quality is real even though
it cannot be defined.

Eventually my unusual teaching methods came to the attention
of the other professors in the department and in a friendly way
they asked the question that connects all this with the struggles
of Niels Bohr: "Is quality in the subject or in the
object?" The answer that was finally given was, "Neither.
Quality is a separate category of experience that is neither
subject or object." This was the beginning of the system
of thought called the Metaphysics of Quality. It has lasted for
more than 35 years now. The question today is, if Niels Bohr
had given that answer would his system of Complementarity have
been improved?

In the Metaphysics
of Quality the world is composed of three things: mind, matter,
and Quality. Because something is not located in the object does
not mean that it has to be located in your mind. Quality cannot
be independently derived from either mind or matter. But it can
be derived from the relationship of mind and matter with each
other. Quality occurs at the point at which subject and object
meet. Quality is not a thing. It is an event. It is the event
at which the subject becomes aware of the object. And because
without objects there can be no subject, quality is the event
at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible.
Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject
and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves
is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause
of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed
to be the cause of the Quality! [Our bold. PDR 10Oct2000]

The most striking similarity between the Metaphysics of Quality
and Complementarity is that this Quality event corresponds to
what Bohr means by "observation." When the Copenhagen
Interpretation "holds that the unmeasured atom is not real,
that it's attributes are created or realized in the act of measurement,"
(Herbert xiii) it is saying something
very close to the Metaphysics of Quality. The observation creates
the reality.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance left one
enormous metaphysical problem unanswered that became the central
driving reason for the expansion of the Metaphysics of Quality
into a second book called Lila. This problem was:
if Quality is a constant, why does it seem so variable? Why do
people have different opinions about it? The answer became:
The quality that was referred to in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance can be subdivided into Dynamic Quality and static
quality. Dynamic Quality is a stream of quality events going
on and on forever, always at the [and] in the cutting edge of
the present. But in the wake of this cutting edge are static
patterns of value. These are memories, cus-

toms, and patterns of nature. The reason
there is a difference between individual evaluations of quality
is that although Dynamic Quality is a constant, these static
patterns are different for everyone because each person has a
different static pattern of life history. Both the Dynamic Quality
and the static patterns influence his final judgment. That is
why there is some uniformity among individual value judgments
but not complete uniformity. Here is a drawing of the
basic framework of the Metaphysics of Quality:

Figure 4

In this diagram you will notice that
Dynamic Quality is not shown in any block. It is in the background.
This seems the best way to represent it. It is not only outside
the

The blocks are organized in the order of evolution, with each
higher block more recent and more Dynamic than the lower ones.
The block at the top contains such static intellectual patterns
as theology, science, philosophy, mathematics. The placement
of intellect in this position makes it superior to society, biology
and inorganic patterns but still inferior to Dynamic Quality.
The Metaphysics of Quality says there can be many competing truths
and it is value that decides among them. This is the very essence
of William James' philosophy of Pragmatism which Bohr greatly
admired. The name "Complementarity" itself means there
can be multiple truths.

The social patterns in the next box down include such institutions
as family, church, and government. They are the patterns of culture
that the anthropologist and sociologist study.

In the third box are the biological patterns: senses
of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. The Metaphysics of
Quality follows the empirical tradition here in saying that the
senses are the starting point of reality, butall
importantlyit includes a
sense of value. Values are phenomena. To ignore them is to misread
the world. It says this sense of value, of liking or disliking,
is a primary sense that is a kind of gatekeeper for everything
else an infant learns. At birth this sense of value is extremely
Dynamic but as the infant grows up this sense of value becomes
more and more influenced by accumulated static patterns. In the
past this biological sense of value has been called "subjective"
because these values cannot be located in an external physical
object. But quantum theory has destroyed the idea that only properties
located in external physical objects have reality.

The bottom box shows inorganic patterns. The Metaphysics of
Quality says objects are composed of "substance" but
it says that this substance can be defined more precisely as
"stable inorganic patterns of value." This added definition
makes substance sound more ephemeral than previously but it is
not. The objects look and smell and feel the same either way.
The Metaphysics of Quality agrees with scientific realism that
these inorganic patterns are completely real, and there is no
reason that box shouldn't be there, but it says that this reality
is ultimately a deduction made in the first months of an infant's
life and supported by the culture in which the infant grows up.
I have noticed that Einstein in his 1936 essay Physics and
Reality also held this view. (Jammer
230) Bohr is sometimes mistakenly thought to say that this inorganic
level does not exist. However both Folse and Max Jammer argue
at length that this is not true. He does not deny this inorganic
reality. He simply says that the properties the physicist describes
cannot be said to reside at this level.

I can now say some general things about this diagram:

First, each higher pattern grows out of the lower one so we
tend to think of the higher pattern as the property of the lower
one. However, if you study the world you will observe that the
higher patterns often oppose the lower ones. Biological values
of life oppose physical values of gravitation and entropy. Social
values of family and law and

order oppose biological values of lust
and greed. Intellectual values of truth and freedom of opinion
often oppose social patterns of government. This opposition of
levels of static patterns offers a good explanation of why science
in the past has rejected what it has called "values."
The "values" it has rejected are static social
prejudices and static biological emotions. When social
patterns such as religion are mixed in with the scientific method,
and when biological emotions are mixed in with the scientific
method these "values" are properly considered a source
of corruption of the scientific method. Science, it is said,
should be "value free," and if these were the only
kind of values the statement would be true.

However, the Metaphysics of Quality observes that these two
kinds of values are lower on the evolutionary ladder than the
intellectual pattern of science. Science rejects them to set
free its own higher intellectual pattern. The Metaphysics of
Quality calls this a correct moral judgment by science. However
science never rejects the value of truth. It never rejects the
value of experiment. It never rejects the value of mathematical
precision. Most important, it never rejects Dynamic Quality.
The greatest strength of the scientific method is that it always
allows new experiences, new ideas and new evaluations of what
it learns.

Next, notice that the Metaphysics of Quality provides a larger
framework in which to integrate subjectivity and objectivity.
Subjectivity and objectivity are not separate universes that
have no connection to each other. They are instead separate stages
of a single evolutionary process called value. I can find no
place where the words subjective and objective are used where
they cannot be replaced by one of these four categories. When
we get rid of the words "subjective" and "objective"
completely often there is a great increase in the clarity of
what is said. One person who I'm sure would agree with me on
this would be Niels Bohr.

A third piece of evidence that reveals the similarity between
the Metaphysics of Quality and Complementarity occurs when Bohr
says, "We are suspended in language," the Metaphysics
of Quality completely agrees. In the block diagram of the Metaphysics
of Quality we see that each higher level of evolution rests on
and is supported by the next lower level of evolution and cannot
do without it. There is no intellect that can independently reach
and make contact with inorganic patterns. It must go through
both society and biology to reach them. In the past science has
insisted on the necessity of biological proofs, that is, proofs
in terms of sense data, and it has tried to discard social patterns
as a source of scientific knowledge. When Bohr says we are suspended
in language I think he means you cannot get rid of the social
contexts either. That was his argument to Heisenberg. The Metaphysics
of Quality supports it.

The fourth evidence of similarity is that the Metaphysics
of Quality substitutes the word "value" for cause.
It says that to say "A causes B" can be better said
as "B values precondition A." This has seemed to me
to be a better terminology for describing quantum phenomena.
The term "cause" implies an absolute certainty that
quantum theory says does not exist.

The fifth evidence of similarity is that
probability itself may be expressed as value, so that "a
static pattern of inorganic values," which is a definition
the Metaphysics of Quality gives to "substance," is
the same as "a pattern of probabilities," which is
a definition quantum theory gives to substance. If the atomic world is composed
of probability waves and if probability is equal to value then
it follows logically that the atomic world is composed of value. The literature on probability is very large
and I haven't read it but I have noted that Heisenberg has said
that "the possibility or 'tendency' for an event to take place has a kind
of realitya
certain intermediate layer of reality, halfway between the massive
reality of matter and the intellectual reality of the idea or
the image ... it is formulated quantitatively as probability
and subject to mathematically expressible laws of nature."
(qtd. in Jammer 44) This intermediate reality
Heisenberg talked about may correspond to value, but I'm not
sure of that. Although
probability may equal inorganic value it certainly doesn't equal
any of the other value patterns.
All of these patternsall of lifeseem to be in a war against it. In biology, conformity to inorganic
probability is another name for death.
(This last statement
by Pirsig is extremely problematic! It says that Pirsig is applying
J. C. Maxwell's 'laws' of thermodynamics to fermionic reality.
But modern quantum~theory shows that Maxwell Lila Blewitt! Maxwell's
theories, like Einstein's are simply bogus! Individual fermions
may be (actual one are) perpetual and adiabatic! Essentially
they live forever, thus denying Maxwell in spades. Doug - 29Apr2010.)

A Doug aside - 28May2005:

It has taken us nearly 10 years, but
now we see clearly that Pirsig just didn't get it!

We first read Pirsig's SODV paper in
December, 1995-January, 1996.

What we highlight in bold violet above
is incorrect!

Recall that John Forbes Nash said "probability
is everything." Nash is correct. (Our usages
of incorrect and correct are somewhat classical.
We need to talk in terms of better, i.e., Nash's statement
is n¤t absolutely, classically,
dialectically 'correct,' rather, it is quantum better.)

It is hard to understand how Pirsig
could so blatantly blow this quintessential of his MoQ. DQ is
absolute flux: change. SQ hesitantly, tentatively, viscously
changes at DQ's unrelenting impetus. Those changes are all
quantum~probabilistic. Why? DQ is waves: quantum flux. We call
it DQ waves: DQ wave 'functions.' DQ is isoflux. SQ is novel
'latched'

All of quantum~n¤nactuality and ~actuality: inorganic, biological,
societal and intellectual Value patterns and their quantum isoflux
quantum~complements are probabilistic quantum wave manifestations. See probability,
QLOs. Also see What is Wrong with Probability
as Value.

Pirsig's statement about conformation to inorganic probability is dialectically objective, what he calls a
platypus of either life or death: dichon(death,
life). Biology endlessly transmutes (metabolisis via both apoptosis-suicide
AKA catabolisis and rebirth-resurrection AKA anabolisis) biological to inorganic and inorganic to biological.
Further (yes Jamal), from any quantum perspective inorganic levels
of 'reality' are absolutely quantum~alive, n¤t dialectically 'dead!'

Clearly Pirsig's own MoQ yet harbors
SOMiticism. It is unfortunate, indeed. Some of his ardent followers
still believe SOM is MoQ's basis, the basis, of 'Quality
Intellect.' Now there is an platypusean oxymoron if we
ever heard one...

It appears Pirsig was somehow, prior
June, 1995, incapable of mapping his MoQ onto quantum reality.
It is apparent that he views inorganic probability as different
from organic probability, again: dichon(organic_probability,
inorganic_probability). This appears to us similar to classical
science's dichon(microscopic, macroscopic). That classical dichotomy
is simply a fraud. Indeed, SOM is a fraud!

The sixth piece of evidence is that the Metaphysics of Quality
answers a problem that Bohr refused to answer. His refusal has
weighed against him. Bohr "refused to comment on the relationship
between Complementarity and the nature of physical reality."
(Folse 223) "Bohr never makes clear
in what sense we can have knowledge of the reality which causes
our experiences." (Folse 241) He leaves
it just hanging in limbo.

The question is why would Bohr do that? It is absurd to think
that he forgot about it, that it just slipped his mind. He must
have had a reason. The explanation, I think, is that Bohr is
prohibited from speaking about any external physical reality
ahead of the experiment. Before the experiment he must say there
is nothing to know. In the old classic physics an external object
was put into the front end of the experiment. It was subjected
to one or another forces and the results studied. Now that external
object is gone. Whatever Bohr says about anything that goes into
the front end of the experiment will be taken as a property of
an independent physical reality. It is vital to Complementarity
that are no properties until after the observation.

So Bohr never mentions the unmeasured phenomenal object shown
as the larger dashed oval in the diagram of Complementarity.
But as was said before, something has to be there. If
it were not there the measuring instruments would just be measuring
their own internal characteristics. It is clear from what Bohr
does say that the unmeasured phenomenal object is unpatterned.
The patterns only emerge after an experiment. This unmeasured
phenomenal object is not the object of classical physics.
This unmeasured phenomenal object is not the subject of
classical physics. So what is left to conclude? It seems to me
that it is not a very large jump of the imagination to see that
this unmeasured phenomenal object is in fact a third category,
which is not subject and not object because it is independent
of the two. When this assertion is made Complementarity is out
from

under its lifelong accusation of subjectivity.
We no longer need to claim that we ourselves alter scientific
reality when we look at it and know about ita claim that Einstein regarded as part of a
"shaky game."

The similarity between Dynamic Quality and Bohr's unmeasured
phenomenal object does not at first seem very great. It is only
when one sees that the unmeasured phenomenal object is not really
phenomenal and not really an object that the two draw closer
together. The unmeasured phenomenal object is not really phenomenal
because it has no characteristics before an observation take[s]
place. It is not really an object because objects are over in
that right oval with the question mark in it. Those objects are
what are being rejected in the first place. So what is this unmeasured
phenomenal object?

It seems to me that a keystone in a bridge between the Metaphysics
of Quality and Complementarity may be established if what has
been called the "unmeasured phenomenal object" is now
called "The Conceptually Unknown" and what is called
"Dynamic Quality" is also called "The Conceptually
Unknown." Then the two come together. I would guess that
the Conceptually Unknown is an unacceptable category in physics
because it is intellectually meaningless and physics is only
concerned with what is intellectually meaningful. That also might
be why Bohr never mentioned it. However I think that this avoidance
of The Conceptually Unknown should be revised. It is like saying
that the number zero is unacceptable to mathematics because there's
nothing there. Mathematics has done very well with the number
"zero" despite that fact. The Conceptually Unknown,
it seems to me, is a workable intellectual category for the description
of nature and it ought to be worked more. As a starting axiom
I would say, "Things which are intellectually meaningless
can nevertheless have value." I don't know of an artist
who would disagree with that. Certainly not René Magritte.

For those who would like more information about this "Conceptually
Unknown" than I can give today there is a valuable book
called Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
from which I derived the title for my own first book. When the
Zen Archer refers to an "it" that shoots the arrow
he is referring to what I mean by Dynamic Quality. For those
who prefer to stay more within the confines of Western analytical
thought there is a book by Prof. F.S.C. Northrop
of Yale University called The Meeting of East and West.
It is the book that really started me on this philosophic quest
that has now lasted 47 years.

Northrop's name for Dynamic Quality is "the undifferentiated
aesthetic continuum." By "continuum" he means
that it goes on and on forever. By "undifferentiated"
he means that it is without conceptual distinctions. And by "aesthetic"
he means that it has quality.

I think science generally agrees that there is something that
has to enter into experiments other than the measuring instruments,
and I think science would agree that "Conceptually Unknown"
is an acceptable name for it. What science might not agree on
is that this Conceptually Unknown is aesthetic. But if the Conceptually
Unknown were not aesthetic why should the scientific community
be so attracted to it? If you think about it

you will see that science would lose all
meaning without this attraction to the unknown. A good word for
the attraction is "curiosity." Without this curiosity
there would never have been any science. Try to imagine a scientist
who has no curiosity whatsoever and estimate what his output
will be.

This aesthetic nature of the Conceptually Unknown is a point
of connection between the sciences and the arts. What relates
science to the arts is that science explores the Conceptually
Unknown in order to develop a theory that will cover measurable
patterns emerging from the unknown. The arts explore the Conceptually
Unknown in other ways to create patterns such as music, literature,
painting, that reveal the Dynamic Quality that produced them.
This description, I think, is the rational connection between
science and the arts.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance art was
defined as high quality endeavor. I have never found a need to
add anything to that definition. But one of the reasons I have
spent so much time in this paper describing the personal relationship
of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in the development of quantum
theory is that although the world views science as a sort of
plodding, logical, methodical advancement of knowledge, what
I saw here were two artists in the throes of creative discovery.
They were at the cutting edge of knowledge plunging into the
unknown trying to bring something out of that unknown into a
static form that would be of value to everyone. As Bohr might
have loved to observe, science and art are just two different
complementary ways of looking at the same thing. In the largest
sense it is really unnecessary to create a meeting of the arts
and sciences because in actual practice, at the most immediate
level, they have never really been separated. They have always
been different aspects of the same fundamental human purpose.

1Later I recalled that N. Katherine Hayles
had commented in The Cosmic Web (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984, p. 65) "The
reader will recognize [in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]
a model very similar to the one Bohr proposed in his interpretation
of the Uncertainty Principle."2 Folse has an
end note saying that "An account which does a superb job
of showing that the debate involved radically opposing conceptions
of reality is C.A. Hooker, 'The Nature of Quantum Mechanical Reality: Einstein Versus Bohr,' in Paradigms and
paradoxes, ed. by R.G. Colodny (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp.
67-302." Jammer cites both Hooker and K. Hübner who
declared "for Einstein relations are defined by substances,
for Bohr substances are defined by relations." (Jammer
157 )